This course is intended as a first step for learners who seek to become producers of social science research. It is organized as an introduction to the design and execution of a research study. It introduces the key elements of a proposal for a research study, and explains the role of each. It reviews the major types of qualitative and quantitative data used in social science research, and then introduces some of the most important sources of existing data available freely or by application, worldwide and for China. The course offers an overview of basic principles in the design of surveys, including a brief introduction to sampling. Basic techniques for quantitative analysis are also introduced, along with a review of common challenges that arise in the interpretation of results. Professional and ethical issues that often arise in the conduct of research are also discussed. The course concludes with an introduction to the options for further study available to the interested student, and an overview of the key steps involved in selecting postgraduate programs and applying for admission. Learners who complete the course will be able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue advanced studies, and should be adequately prepared to write an application for postgraduate study that exhibits basic understanding of key aspects of social science research paradigms and methodologies.
Explore the big questions in social science and learn how you can be a producer of social science research.
Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/QuMOAlwhpvU
Part 1 should be completed before taking this course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/social-science-study-chinese-society

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De la lección

Designing a Study

Welcome to Social Science Approaches to the Study of Chinese Society Part 2! Part 2 focuses on being a PRODUCER of Social Science Research. Take some time to review the course overview, assignments for this course and say hello in the discussion forum.

Impartido por:

Cameron Campbell

Professor of Social Science

Transcripción

[MUSIC] Hi, in this module, I'm going to introduce the background, or literature review section of the research proposal. A background or literature review section typically has several goals. One is to introduce in a very broad way, the issues the debates to which the research is intended to contribute. Second is to review previous empirical studies that is publish studies that appear to or do considered the same relationships. The same phenomenon as are to be considered, in the proposed research study. Next is to introduce some motivation in a way of actually establishing by comparison to these previous studies that the propose study is distinct and different. And actually those something that the other studies did not do. Another goal of the background or the literature review section is to introduce the setting. Especially for studies that are to be conducted in places, time periods and so forth, that may not be familiar to the average reader. The setting will introduce step context to the reader give them the details they need to understand other parts of the proposal. So we going to talk about part of the background or literature review section that talks about issues. This is typically a big picture introduction to the issues and debates that the proposed research study hopes to contribute. So this may expand upon or document claims that were made in the impact or significant section of the proposal about the importance of the phenomenon of interest. So for example, specially if there are tight space limitation in the impact and significance section. There might be some general claims there about the importance of the phenomenon being studied. And then here, is where those claims will be documented perhaps by a summary of previous and purical studies that have shown that the phenomenon study is focused on really is widespread and is common. The issue section may also introduce the origins and the history of the phenomenon under consideration. So for example, if we're thinking about the relationship between education and health. This is where there might be a review that goes back into history and talks about the emergence of differences in death rates, in health according to education over the course of the 20th century. In fact, there were limited differences by education before the 20th century. And the differences that we see now, the very broad differences are a phenomenon especially the middle and late 20th century, although they some emerged earlier. So this is where that background would go that explains the origins and the development of the phenomenon that the study seeks to focus on. Finally, the issues portion of the background or literature review should provide a comprehensive overview of the major theoretical prospectives related to the phenomenon. The relationship that the study seeks to examine. So for any study that we might conduct and some relationship we're trying to explain. Again for example the relationship between education and health there are typically multiple competing theories that seek to explain it. In the case of education and health sometimes that relationship has been attributed to the mediating role of income that education gives people higher income which allows them to access better healthcare. There are other theories that suggest that education affects people's personal behaviors which then affects their health and so on. So it is important in a literature review to offer a broad overview of these competing explanations. And then show how the proposed study fits into that broader bigger picture. The next portion of literature review or the background is a detailed review of existing empirical studies that look at the same phenomenon. So for example, this might be where we would actually look at empirical studies that look at the relationship between education and health. So here, we're moving from the more broader picture that we addressed in the issue section. And zeroing on actual studies that have been conducted that measure the relationship and seek to explain it. The discussion here because again space may be limited, should be focused on the conclusions of these published studies, their strengths, and their limitations. So it's typically not necessarily to provide an exhaustive detailed summary of every single study that's ever been published on a particular topic that's related to the proposed research study. But rather it's important to highlight what their conclusions were and what their strengths were and what their possible criticisms were. This leads to a discussion of the differences between the proposed study and apparently similar studies. So a careful review of the ways in which the proposed study may have subtle or small differences or even large differences between these previous empirical studies. Now again as I just said, detailed summaries of existing studies generally should be avoided. It's a common problem is that people try to summarize existing studies in too much detail, stick to the highlights. This discussion of previous studies helps to motivate the proposed study by identifying gaps in the literature. So hopefully, the review of previous studies by providing an inventory of studies that have already been done by other people. And relating them to each other has helped identify holes or gaps in the literature which have not yet been addressed. These may relate to data, methods or theory. So this is where you might talk about the fact that of these studies that were reviewed in the review of previous studies. None of them have made use of a particular new source of data. None of them made use a very particular novel set of methods. Or none of them really took seriously a new theory or an existing theory that might be applicable to the situation. So this discussion of previous studies and the attempt to identify the gaps. And then show how the proposed research study, fills these gaps should be related back to any claims about novelty of the proposed study. That were made earlier in the section of the proposal devoted to impact and significance. So again it maybe that during the section of impacts and significance. It may have been because of space limitations that people didn't have real time to give a lot of detail about why a particular study or proposed study was novel and here is where you can put those details in. Here's where you can also recap the findings from the previous studies that guided the choice of data, methods, or these specification of the model in the propose study. Finally, another important goal of the literature or background review section is to introduce the setting of the study. The level of detail in this portion of the background section will depend on how familiar the audience is with the setting of your study. If you're conducting a study of the contemporary United States and your audience is people who are already deeply familiar with that setting. You may not have to go into a lot of detail, you don't have to offer a comprehensive summary of everything that has been going on in the United States. However, if your setting is someplace that's not familiar to the audience that you're addressing the proposal to, then you probably have to go in to a lot more detail. I work on China, but when I write proposals it used to be typically for american audience. So I have to offer a lot of background on the setting of my study and particular in Northeast China where my study were connected. Because again the audience that I was writing for was not familiar with that setting. This is where, if you are studying a particular village, a particular region, etc, etc, you would have to introduced and talk about that setting and talk about how it might be special or different. This is where following up on that is where you would address questions about the representativeness of the setting of your study, representativeness of the population that you're studying. So if you are not studying an entire country or the entire world or an entire region, but some subset perhaps let's say particular place, particular category of people. You have to talk about the issue of whether or not they represent or offer inside into some larger set of people and maybe that you don't expecting to. But most of the time, for example, if we're doing a study of single village. This is were we might try to talk about whether or not we expect that there's enough about this village that we know that we think we could generalize to other villages. And similarly, if we're focusing the study on particular sub-population for a bit example, elites the people that make up a particular religion. Members of a criminal gang, the employees of a corporation, then we have to introduce that sub-population as well. And address issues of representativeness or if we're not interested in representativeness, help establish that that sub-population is worthy of study.